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THQ Announces The Rock Map Pack for Homefront

Developer Kaos Studios is no more, but publisher THQ is still forging ahead with plans for its U.S.-under-siege shooter, Homefront. THQ has announced that a new San Francisco-themed map pack for the FPS will be available soon.

THQ shuttered Kaos Studios last month but made it clear Homefront would live on. The publisher promptly moved the property to its newly opened Montreal studio and said announcements about the brand would be coming in the not-too-distant future.

Today we get word The Rock map pack will bring two new multiplayer levels, Alcatraz and Bridge, and open up two existing multiplayer maps, Waterway and Overpass, to Team Deathmatch mode. The rundown from THQ:

Alcatraz - America's most infamous prison becomes the site of fierce close-quarters fighting.Bridge – A combined arms effort to secure the North Tower of the Golden Gate Bridge and surrounding area, large-scale warfare at its best.Waterway – Wage war atop storefronts and in the streets of the Spillway, where every inch feels like a mile.Overpass – Battle in a fan-favorite Ground Control space for the first time in Team Deathmatch.

No release date was announced beyond "coming soon." THQ did say The Rock would hit Xbox Live first before being available on PS3 and PC, and the new Homefront DLC will cost $5 or 400 Microsoft Points.

As long as people are buying it, it means they're enjoying it. If they buy the next Call of Duty, it's because they loved the last one and they want more of it. So I am pretty down on people who take the sort of creative auteurs' perspective. It's like 'Oh, we're not being creative.' But we're creating value for people - that's our job! It's not to do something that nobody's ever seen before. It's to do something that people love so much they're willing to give us money for.

I'd argue that Homefront is a prime example why Carmack's thinking is flawed to the extreme. Call of Duty became such a huge success because it was creative, and it did do something nobody's ever seen before when Infinity Ward added leveling/RPG elements and killstreak rewards into Modern Warfare. More of the same, which is what we've seen from the industry since CoD4, adds up to games like Homefront.